There
are a lot of us that spend too much time worrying. According
to The National Institute on Mental Health, approximately
40 million American adults ages 18 and older, or about
18.1 percent of people in this age group in a given
year, have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety prevents us
from being happy, can cause physical ailments, and keeps
us from taking healthy risks that may improve the quality
of our lives.

Worry
may be a trait that is passed on genetically from your
family or it may be an outcome of your environment.
One or both of your parents may suffer from intense
anxiety and you learn to be anxious because it is modeled
for you as a way of living. The worry is usually driven
by a need to have a guaranteed outcome. Of course there
are very few situations that result in a sure-fire conclusion.
Therefore the worrying does not seem to have any purpose
or any positive effects in one’s life.

The
worrying can become habitual where you immediately turn
to the feelings of anxiousness in your stomach, the
endless spinning of your thoughts and the sense that
disaster is about to occur. You believe that there is
not an alternative to this way of being because you
have been processing information in this manner your
entire life.

However,
there is a means to transform the worrying to peace
through physical exercise. There are many studies that
conclude that physical exercise brings a state of well
being and
calmness. There is research that indicates that working
out as little as 15 minutes at a time will enable you
to reach this state.

First,
make an appointment with your physician to clear you
for participating in physical exercise. While you are
walking, running, biking or other aerobic activity do
the following:

Notice if you are feeling anxious or worried when
you begin your workout. What is making you anxious?
Are you worried about some project at work that is
overdue? Are you anxious about your relationship with
your husband/wife or partner? Are you having a conflict
with a friend or family member?

Notice
when a sense of calmness comes over you. What does
this feel like? Do you notice your worrying decreasing
or dissipating? What does your body feel like now?
Do you feel strong and confident? Do you see yourself
differently? Do you feel better about yourself?

Now, focus on the issue that was making you anxious
in the beginning of your workout. Do you still feel
anxious or has the anxiety decreased? Do you feel
that you can develop a strategy for working through
this difficulty? If so, do you notice how clear thinking
you are? How is the strategy planning going? Is it
going smoothly?

A
regular exercise program will help ease your worrying.
You will notice that the confusion that is created by
anxiety will decrease or dissipate. You will discover
that issues that once seemed impossible to approach,
much less resolve, and become much easier to work through.
You can learn to capture this peaceful feeling that
you obtain from exercising while you are sedentary.
This process won’t happen overnight, but it can
with practice.

A
regular exercise program can lead you to living a life
where you focus on living happily in the present instead
of worrying about the future or dreading the past.